Surprisingly, Azerbaijan has a long history of jazz dating back to the first State Popular Orchestra in 1938. But during to Cold War, Soviet authorities dubbed jazz a “seditiouswestern music” and jazz performances were officially banned. Despite the prohibition, jazz fans gathered in secret to listen to western radio stations and afterwards tried to play what they had heard.

In the late 1960s, jazz music began its second life in Azerbaijan with such composers as Gara Garayev, Tofig Guliyev, Rauf Hajiyev and Rafiq Babayev who formed Boкaльньiй Kвapтет „ГAЯ” or Vocal Quartet “Gaya”.

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Gaya also had an LP in 1978 on Melodiya under the English title “Gaya Azerbaijan Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble” (specified “Art Direct: T. Mirzoev”). It has a strange red, pink, and green rainbow cover with “Gaya” in the middle of it in Roman and Cyrillic script. 11 tracks total in English, Ukrainian, Azeri, Italian, and one in Spanish and Russian. Mostly light pop/rock filler, but worth hunting down for the blazing funk/rock track “Aman yar”. Shows up on E-bay every so often, never over $10 that I’ve seen. Heck, even the pop filler is mostly pretty enjoyable.